Noah Harpster
Noah Harpster is an actor, born 1976.
Noah Harpster (born 1976) works both sides of the camera, and the acting credits undersell him. He writes and produces as well, most consequentially on Transparent, where he also appeared as Francis, work that brought a Peabody Award and an Emmy nomination. To comedy audiences he is best known as Remy in Tig Notaro's One Mississippi.
As a performer he has spent two decades in the small-part economy: a fan in Paparazzi (2004), Robert Rodale in Dirty Love (2005), Jonah in Disaster Movie (2008). The parts improve as the material does. Afternoon Delight (2013) and The Motel Life (2013) are the kind of low-budget American drama where a supporting actor gets a scene rather than a line, and Grassroots (2012) uses him in a comedy about a long-shot city council campaign.
His steadiest recent screen work is For All Mankind, where he plays Bill Strausser inside the mission control of a space race that never ended. It suits him. Harpster is useful in rooms full of procedure, where the tension comes from someone being competent and irritating at the same time, and where a scene is won by the person who read the paperwork.
Movies (8)
TV (2)
Where to start with Noah Harpster
The easiest way in is For All Mankind, and the most rewarding, because it is the one role here with room to grow across several seasons rather than a single afternoon of shooting. Transparent matters more for what he did off camera, though it is worth watching for the writing that drew the awards attention in the first place.
For film, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is the best thing he appears in, a quiet picture about a magazine journalist and Fred Rogers that refuses to be sentimental about either of them. Afternoon Delight and The Motel Life are the small dramas, both worth a look if you like watching actors do more with less. Skip Disaster Movie unless you are studying the parody cycle at its lowest ebb, and treat Dirty Love the same way. His best-loved comic role, Remy on One Mississippi, is not among the credits listed here.